The Helix Institute hosted a webinar exploring microfinance institutions’ use of digital finance.

The biggest gaps to achieving financial inclusion in the country/industry in focus:

The three biggest barriers we see in the Kenyan market are: Apprehension around interoperability by digital financial service (DFS) providers, partial development of the DFS ecosystem particularly in deep rural areas, value propositions that do not effectively meet the varied customer needs and preferences.

Key action steps to advance financial inclusion:

Our event was focused on DFS for MFIs. One concrete action that MFIs could take to further financial inclusion is to leverage DFS to improve their operational efficiencies and productivity and thus extend their outreach.

Quote(s) from the discussion:

In order to remain relevant and play a bigger role in financial inclusion, MFIs need to embrace DFS. This will require an evaluation of their current constraints (e.g. regulation) and opportunities (e.g. established DFS infrastructure, customer awareness) in their respective markets as well as their own internal capacities; choice amongst strategic options available and development of a sustainable and scalable business model that will increase outreach.

The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion (CFI) is an action-oriented think tank dedicated to enabling 3 billion people underserved by the financial sector to improve their lives. CFI engages and challenges the financial inclusion industry to better serve, protect and empower clients through its insights, advocacy and stakeholder engagement.